Currently, public safety answering points (PSAPs) can only communicate with end users (i.e., people who are in need of assistance) via voice telephone calls. However, this approach is limited in several ways. First, people with hearing or speech disabilities may be unable to acquire assistance via voice telephone calls. Second, people may prefer to use non-voice communications to acquire assistance due to their situation—whether background noise, poor voice communications quality, or an incident such as a hostage scenario where a voice call may not be possible, for example. Lastly, some assistance calls may be better served by non-voice communications such as multimedia and detailed text messages, for example. Also, although PSAPs can accept phone calls from mobile phone users, there are additional complications involved with voice communications between PSAPs and mobile phones.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for improved systems and methods for communicating with PSAPs and contact centers in general.